SACRAMENTO (CBS13)  There is now a shocking new strategy to fight copper crime. Street lights are now staying on 24-hours a day in one Sacramento neighborhood and the city is banking on live wires to keep criminals away.

The city now figures keeping them turned on will save money, by warding off copper thieves; keeping the lights on mean live wires, and the unlucky thief who doesnt know better could be electrocuted.

Its quite a warning, from a city thats been hit hard by the copper crime.

Typical. The politicians in Sacramento impose endless “green” regulations on the people of their state. And then the city politicians decide to leave the street lights on all day, sucking up dirty power.

I have never seen a streetlight that was not operated by a photocell and if it is operated by a photocell the power is on to the photocell 24/7 and the photocell acts as the switch to turn on the ballast and bulb. all three of these parts are usually integral parts of the light fixture. so the power is on at all times to the fixture. did they remove the photocell and jump the socket it occupies to keep the light on? that would be dumb as hell.

What you say may be true for suburban and rural areas, bit what I have noticed in the urban areas is that there is a light sensor on one “main” pole that controls a few blocks or so of the lights “down stream”. Where I work I have seen them go on and off simultaneously for several blocks at a time. I guess it saves money on buying light sensors.

16
posted on 05/08/2011 5:50:08 PM PDT
by Repeal The 17th
(Proud to be a (small) monthly donor.)

We have them here in my small town too. Just this past Wed. I sat my g/son/s beat up old bike to the curb by the garbage cans and it was gone within an hour. The week before it was an old vacuum cleaner.

I don’t begrudge the pickers though, if they can make an honest buck or two off discards, more power to them.

I read about a city though, Bombay? Calcutta? where they actually sell licenses for a small fee to the people who swarm their dumps.

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